Monthly Archives: November 2016

I have long been a lover of wolves, I love their fierce pack loyalty combined with the concept of an Alpha.

Now, I don’t know if this is true or not, some reading I’ve done suggest the impact is overstated. Perhaps. But in addition to being a feel good story, it does underscore my feeling that nature will survive.

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One aspect of Trump’s victory was his campaign of economic nationalism – that China was stealing our jobs and he was going to bring them back. Of course, China wasn’t alone in his analysis – Mexico and Ford played a part as well.

The fact is, labor is a commodity and purchasers of labor will buy it at its cheapest.

If we want people to purchase American labor inn greater quantities, we have to make our labor cheaper.

Coyote lists but a few of the ways that we increase, needlessly, that price:

minimum wage laws, rising to $15 an hour in many parts of the country, and increasingly draconian overtime rules, both of which substantially raise the cost of hiring someone.

minimum benefit laws, including expensive health care requirements in Obamacare and a myriad of other state-level requirements such as mandatory paid sick leave or family leave

payroll taxes that act as sales taxes on labor — we understand that cigarette taxes are supposed to reduce cigarette purchases but don’t understand that payroll taxes reduce purchases of labor?

employment regulations, such as chair laws and break laws in California, that make employing people more expensive and risky

employer liability laws, that make employers financially responsible for any knuckleheaded thing their employees do, even when these actions violate company policy (e.g. making racist or sexist statements)**

laws that make hiring far more risk, including those that limit the ability to do due diligence on potential employees (e.g. ban the box) and those that limit the ability of employers to fire poor performing employees.

We have yet to see how a President Trump will work to try and make the cost of American labor more equitable.

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I have in-laws in Brooklyn. I love going to visit. In my travels I have met a friend of the family there on the street. She’s great. Yet every time I see her, every time, she wistfully asks me if the cost of living in North Carolina is as low as she hears it to be.

I always say yes.

Finally, one time I just couldn’t control myself. See, the friend is a full on democrat. So, as I answered in the affirmative, I added on. I said, “The reason we enjoy such quality of life is that we don’t vote democrat. We don’t impose expensive taxes and regulations, fees and zoning laws. We are freer than you are.”

Dear Conservatives: As you wallow around in your election-day schadenfreude, I offer you this note of caution: Except perhaps on immigration and a few miscellaneous issues like climate, Trump is not a Conservative. He has no apparent respect for the Constitution, or free speech, or any number of individual freedoms. He is a serial abuser of eminent domain and has lived off of crony rents for decades. We often compare government unfavorably to private individuals when it comes to budgeting, observing that most of us can only spend as much as we bring in, unlike a profligate Federal government — but Trump can’t control spending in his own private sphere and has run up huge amounts of debt he has had to disavow in various quests for self-aggrandizement. Do you really think he won’t do the same thing with public funds?

I said this morning I would give up political prognostication, but I am fairly sure in less than 6 months we are going to see prominent Conservatives coming out publicly with buyer’s remorse.

I have been Never Trump from the start, I warned my republican friends that if nominated, I wouldn’t vote for him. I went so far as to say that if I were forced to vote for Hillary or Donald, I’d have to go with Clinton [luckily there were three options for me].

I don’t think that he has the temperament, the character or the policy platform that qualify him for the highest office in the land. Yet he won.

I am distressed.

I’m distressed that the republican party couldn’t nominate a better candidate AND distressed that the democrat party couldn’t nominate someone strong enough to sway me to vote for them. Truly a sad day in America that we woke up to.

Now, is there any good news? Yes.

Barack Obama didn’t win last night.

Harry Reid didn’t win either.

The republicans held the Senate.

And the House.

There was a massive down ticket win for the conservatives.

It cannot be overstated how important it is that President Obama is soon too be out of power.; it’s been a brutal 8 years. Further, with control of the senate there will be consideration for the Supreme Court – and if Trump holds too his word [not a guarantee] there will be a conservative Justice to replace the conservative Justice. And perhaps another and maybe even another.

Perhaps the worst fears of the left have been realized and the racists and the bigots and the fear mongers got their man. I hope that’s not the case. If there is any hope of a ray of light in this, it’s that true blue red blooded Americans were fed up with 8 years of failed policies, were fed up with an elite republican party structure that ignored them after 2010 and were rightfully fearful of an utterly corrupt and morally empty human being that is Hillary Clinton. Let us hope that we can find the better angels of our nature.

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I’m still #NeverTrump, but I have some neighbors that I like who are voting for The Donald. They placed a Trump sign on community property; the corner of our two streets.

A neighbor down the way drove over the sign rendering it bent and mangled. Now, while I’m not voting for Trump I found this behavior horrible. So I stopped and tried to re-purpose the sign and put it back, but this time next to an electric facility box – to prevent driving over it again.

When I drove by the corner 25 minutes later the sign was pulled out and thrown into the grove. My neighbor pulled it out and again placed it next to the facility box.